OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Exploring Trust-Aware Neighbourhood in Trust-based Recommendation
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2016
Year: 2016

Traditional Recommender Systems (RS) do not consider any personal user information beyond rating history. Such information, on the other hand, is widely available on social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter). As a result, social networks have recently been used in recommendation systems. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for incorporating social signals into the recommendation process by building a trust network which supplements the users' rating profiles. We first show the effect of different cold-start users types on the Collaborative Filtering (CF) technique in several real-world datasets. Later, we propose a "Trust-Aware Neighbourhood" algorithm which addresses a performance issue of the former by limiting the trusted neighbourhood. We show the doubling of the rating coverage compared to the traditional CF technique, and a significant improvement in the accuracy for some datasets. Focusing specifically on cold-start users, we propose a "Hybrid Trust-Aware Neighbourhood" algorithm which expands the neighbourhood by considering both trust and rating history of the users. We show a near complete coverage with a rich trust network dataset-- Flixster. We conclude by discussing the potential implementation of this algorithm in a budget-constrained cloud environment.
Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications: New Results for Rural Connectivity
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

This paper shows the remarkable distances that can be achieved using millimeter wave communications, and presents a new rural macrocell (RMa) path loss model for millimeter wave frequencies, based on measurements at 73 GHz in rural Virginia. Path loss models are needed to estimate signal coverage and interference for wireless network design, yet little is known about rural propagation at millimeter waves. This work identifies problems with the RMa model used by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) TR 38.900 Release 14, and offers a close-in (CI) reference distance model that has improved accuracy, fewer parameters, and better stability as compared with the existing 3GPP RMa path loss model. The measurements and models presented here are the first to validate rural millimeter wave path loss models.
Secure Communication in Uplink Transmissions: User Selection and Multiuser Secrecy Gain
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

In this paper, we investigate secure communications in uplink transmissions, where there are a base station (BS) with M receive antennas, K mobile users each with a single antenna, and an eavesdropper with N receive antennas. The closed-form expressions of the achievable ergodic secrecy sumrates (ESSR) for a random k users selection scheme in the high and low SNR regimes are presented. It is shown that the scaling behavior of ESSR with respect to the number of served users k can be quite different under different system configurations, determined by the numbers of the BS antennas and that of the eavesdropper antennas. In order to achieve a multiuser gain, two low-complexity user selection schemes are proposed under different assumptions on the eavesdropper's channel state information (CSI). The closed-form expressions of the achievable ESSRs and the multiuser secrecy gains of the two schemes are also presented in both low and high SNR regimes. We observe that, as k increases, the multiuser secrecy gain increases, while the ESSR may decrease. Therefore, when N is much larger than M, serving one user with the strongest channel (TDMA-like) is a favourable secrecy scheme, where the ESSR scales with root square of 2 log K.
Using Distributed Representations to Disambiguate Biomedical and Clinical Concepts
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2016
Year: 2016

In this paper, we report a knowledge-based method for Word Sense Disambiguation in the domains of biomedical and clinical text. We combine word representations created on large corpora with a small number of definitions from the UMLS to create concept representations, which we then compare to representations of the context of ambiguous terms. Using no relational information, we obtain comparable performance to previous approaches on the MSH-WSD dataset, which is a well-known dataset in the biomedical domain. Additionally, our method is fast and easy to set up and extend to other domains. Supplementary materials, including source code, can be found at https: //github.com/clips/yarn
A short-key one-time pad cipher
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2016
Year: 2016

A process for the secure transmission of data is presented that has to a certain degree the advantages of the one-time pad (OTP) cipher, that is, simplicity, speed, and information-theoretically security, but overcomes its fundamental weakness, the necessity of securely exchanging a key that is as long as the message. For each transmission, a dedicated one-time pad is generated for encrypting and decrypting the plaintext message. This one-time pad is built from a randomly chosen set of basic keys taken from a public library. Because the basic keys can be chosen and used multiple times, the method is called multiple-time pad (MTP) cipher. The information on the choice of basic keys is encoded in a short keyword that is transmitted by secure means. The process is made secure against known-plaintext attack by additional design elements. The process is particularly useful for high-speed transmission of mass data and video or audio streaming.
lpopt: A Rule Optimization Tool for Answer Set Programming
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2016
Year: 2016

State-of-the-art answer set programming (ASP) solvers rely on a program called a grounder to convert non-ground programs containing variables into variable-free, propositional programs. The size of this grounding depends heavily on the size of the non-ground rules, and thus, reducing the size of such rules is a promising approach to improve solving performance. To this end, in this paper we announce lpopt, a tool that decomposes large logic programming rules into smaller rules that are easier to handle for current solvers. The tool is specifically tailored to handle the standard syntax of the ASP language (ASP-Core) and makes it easier for users to write efficient and intuitive ASP programs, which would otherwise often require significant hand-tuning by expert ASP engineers. It is based on an idea proposed by Morak and Woltran (2012) that we extend significantly in order to handle the full ASP syntax, including complex constructs like aggregates, weak constraints, and arithmetic expressions. We present the algorithm, the theoretical foundations on how to treat these constructs, as well as an experimental evaluation showing the viability of our approach.
Hierarchical Shape Abstraction for Analysis of Free-List Memory Allocators
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2016
Year: 2016

We propose a hierarchical abstract domain for the analysis of free-list memory allocators that tracks shape and numerical properties about both the heap and the free lists. Our domain is based on Separation Logic extended with predicates that capture the pointer arithmetics constraints for the heap-list and the shape of the free-list. These predicates are combined using a hierarchical composition operator to specify the overlapping of the heap-list by the free-list. In addition to expressiveness, this operator leads to a compositional and compact representation of abstract values and simplifies the implementation of the abstract domain. The shape constraints are combined with numerical constraints over integer arrays to track properties about the allocation policies (best-fit, first-fit, etc). Such properties are out of the scope of the existing analyzers. We implemented this domain and we show its effectiveness on several implementations of free-list allocators.
Design of a Trajectory Tracking Controller for a Nanoquadcopter
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2016
Year: 2016

The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the system modeling of a nanoquadcopter as well as designing position and trajectory control algorithms, with the ultimate goal of testing the system both in simulation and on a real platform. The open source nanoquadcopter platform named Crazyflie 2.0 was chosen for the project. The first phase consisted in the development of a mathematical model that describes the dynamics of the quadcopter. Secondly, a simulation environment was created to design two different control architectures: cascaded PID position tracker and LQT trajectory tracker. Finally, the implementation phase consisted in testing the controllers on the chosen platform and comparing their performance in trajectory tracking. Our simulations agreed with the experimental results, and further refinement of the model is proposed as future work through closed-loop model identification techniques. The results show that the LQT controller performed better at tracking trajectories, with RMS errors in position up to four times smaller than those obtained with the PID. LQT control effort was greater, but eliminated the high control peaks that induced motor saturation in the PID controller. The LQT controller was also tested using an ultra-wide band two-way ranging system, and comparisons with the more precise VICON system indicate that the controller could track a trajectory in both cases despise the difference in noise levels between the two systems.
Steganalyzer performances in operational contexts
Venue: arXiv cs.MM 2016
Year: 2016

Steganography and steganalysis are two important branches of the information hiding field of research. Steganography methods consist in hiding information in such a way that the secret message is undetectable for the uninitiated. Steganalyzis encompasses all the techniques that attempt to detect the presence of such hidden information. This latter is usually designed by making classifiers able to separate innocent images from steganographied ones according to their differences on well-selected features. We wonder, in this article whether it is possible to construct a kind of universal steganalyzer without any knowledge regarding the steganographier side. The effects on the classification score of a modification of either parameters or methods between the learning and testing stages are then evaluated, while the possibility to improve the separation score by merging many methods during learning stage is deeper investigated.
Learning Word Embeddings from Intrinsic and Extrinsic Views
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2016
Year: 2016

While word embeddings are currently predominant for natural language processing, most of existing models learn them solely from their contexts. However, these context-based word embeddings are limited since not all words' meaning can be learned based on only context. Moreover, it is also difficult to learn the representation of the rare words due to data sparsity problem. In this work, we address these issues by learning the representations of words by integrating their intrinsic (descriptive) and extrinsic (contextual) information. To prove the effectiveness of our model, we evaluate it on four tasks, including word similarity, reverse dictionaries,Wiki link prediction, and document classification. Experiment results show that our model is powerful in both word and document modeling.
Self-Adaptive Trade-off Decision Making for Autoscaling Cloud-Based Services
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2016
Year: 2016

Elasticity in the cloud is often achieved by on-demand autoscaling. In such context, the goal is to optimize the Quality of Service (QoS) and cost objectives for the cloud-based services. However, the difficulty lies in the facts that these objectives, e.g., throughput and cost, can be naturally conflicted, and the QoS of cloud-based services often interfere due to the shared infrastructure in cloud. Consequently, dynamic and effective trade-off decision making of autoscaling in the cloud is necessary, yet challenging. In particular, it is even harder to achieve well-compromised trade-offs, where the decision largely improves the majority of the objectives, while causing relatively small degradations to others. In this paper, we present a self-adaptive decision making approach for autoscaling in the cloud. It is capable to adaptively produce autoscaling decisions that lead to well-compromised trade-offs without heavy human intervention. We leverage on ant colony inspired multi-objective optimization for searching and optimizing the trade-offs decisions, the result is then filtered by compromise-dominance, a mechanism that extracts the decisions with balanced improvements in the trade-offs. We experimentally compare our approach to four state-of-the-arts autoscaling approaches: rule, heuristic, randomized and multi-objective genetic algorithm based solutions. The results reveal the effectiveness of our approach over the others, including better quality of trade-offs and significantly smaller violation of the requirements.
Towards Dependable Change Management and Traceability for Global Software Development
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2016
Year: 2016

This paper reports on our definition of guidelines for managing global software development (GSD) that implements the specific practice - manage requirements changes - of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 2. The guidelines present a model for change management and traceability that supports the implementation of the specific CMMI Level 2 goal. Also, to support the effective management of the system engineering processes, an adaptation of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) process group (PG) for project life-cycle practices is provided. We introduce a cloud-based Reactive Middleware which provides services for managing GSD projects towards dependable change management and traceability.
Space-Time Block Diagonalization for Frequency-Selective MIMO Broadcast Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

The most relevant linear precoding method for frequency-flat MIMO broadcast channels is block diagonalization (BD) which, under certain conditions, attains the same nonlinear dirty paper coding channel capacity. However, BD is not easily translated to frequency-selective channels, since space-time information is required for transceiver design. In this paper, we demonstrate that BD is feasible in frequency-selective MIMO broadcast channels to eliminate inter-user interference (IUI) if the transmit block length is sufficiently large, and if the number of transmit antennas is greater than the number of users. We also propose three different approaches to mitigate/eliminate inter-symbol interference (ISI) in block transmissions: i) time-reversal-based BD (TRBD) which maximizes spatial focusing around the receivers using transmitter processing only, ii) equalized BD (EBD) which minimizes the ISI using transmitter processing only, and iii) joint processing BD (JPBD), which uses linear processing at the transmitter and the receiver to suppress ISI. We analyze the theoretical diversity and multiplexing gains of these techniques, and we demonstrate that JPBD approximates full multiplexing gain for a sufficiently large transmit block length. Extensive numerical simulations show that the achievable rate and probability of error performance of all the proposed methods improve those of conventional time-reversal beamforming. Moreover, JPBD provides the highest achievable rate region for frequency-selective MIMO broadcast channels.
A Vision for Online Verification-Validation
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2016
Year: 2016

Today's programmers face a false choice between creating software that is extensible and software that is correct. Specifically, dynamic languages permit software that is richly extensible (via dynamic code loading, dynamic object extension, and various forms of reflection), and today's programmers exploit this flexibility to "bring their own language features" to enrich extensible languages (e.g., by using common JavaScript libraries). Meanwhile, such library-based language extensions generally lack enforcement of their abstractions, leading to programming errors that are complex to avoid and predict. To offer verification for this extensible world, we propose online verification-validation (OVV), which consists of language and VM design that enables a "phaseless" approach to program analysis, in contrast to the standard static-dynamic phase distinction. Phaseless analysis freely interposes abstract interpretation with concrete execution, allowing analyses to use dynamic (concrete) information to prove universal (abstract) properties about future execution. In this paper, we present a conceptual overview of OVV through a motivating example program that uses a hypothetical database library. We present a generic semantics for OVV, and an extension to this semantics that offers a simple gradual type system for the database library primitives. The result of instantiating this gradual type system in an OVV setting is a checker that can progressively type successive continuations of the program until a continuation is fully verified. To evaluate the proposed vision of OVV for this example, we implement the VM semantics (in Rust), and show that this design permits progressive typing in this manner.
Worst case QC-MDPC decoder for McEliece cryptosystem
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2016
Year: 2016

McEliece encryption scheme which enjoys relatively small key sizes as well as a security reduction to hard problems of coding theory. Furthermore, it remains secure against a quantum adversary and is very well suited to low cost implementations on embedded devices. Decoding MDPC codes is achieved with the (iterative) bit flipping algorithm, as for LDPC codes. Variable time decoders might leak some information on the code structure (that is on the sparse parity check equations) and must be avoided. A constant time decoder is easy to emulate, but its running time depends on the worst case rather than on the average case. So far implementations were focused on minimizing the average cost. We show that the tuning of the algorithm is not the same to reduce the maximal number of iterations as for reducing the average cost. This provides some indications on how to engineer the QC-MDPC-McEliece scheme to resist a timing side-channel attack.
On the queue-number of graphs with bounded tree-width
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2016
Year: 2016

A queue layout of a graph consists of a linear order on the vertices and an assignment of the edges to queues, such that no two edges in a single queue are nested. The minimum number of queues needed in a queue layout of a graph is called its queue-number. We show that for each $k\geq1$, graphs with tree-width at most $k$ have queue-number at most $2^k-1$. This improves upon double exponential upper bounds due to Dujmović et al. and Giacomo et al. As a consequence we obtain that these graphs have track-number at most $2^{O(k^2)}$. We complement these results by a construction of $k$-trees that have queue-number at least $k+1$. Already in the case $k=2$ this is an improvement to existing results and solves a problem of Rengarajan and Veni Madhavan, namely, that the maximal queue-number of $2$-trees is equal to $3$.
Profile Analyst: Advanced Job Candidate Matching via Automatic Skills Linking
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2016
Year: 2016

The recruitment process is a slow and inefficient one at best, and a potentially ineffective one at worst. Matching candidates to jobs is one thing, but matching candidates with jobs alongside appropriate expectations and taking into account the right aptitude and suitability for any given role is another thing and in this paper we look at a whole new way of matching jobs with potential candidates as well as matching against their overall suitability for a given role.
Tracking Amendments to Legislation and Other Political Texts with a Novel Minimum-Edit-Distance Algorithm: DocuToads
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2016
Year: 2016

Political scientists often find themselves tracking amendments to political texts. As different actors weigh in, texts change as they are drafted and redrafted, reflecting political preferences and power. This study provides a novel solution to the prob- lem of detecting amendments to political text based upon minimum edit distances. We demonstrate the usefulness of two language-insensitive, transparent, and efficient minimum-edit-distance algorithms suited for the task. These algorithms are capable of providing an account of the types (insertions, deletions, substitutions, and trans- positions) and substantive amount of amendments made between version of texts. To illustrate the usefulness and efficiency of the approach we replicate two existing stud- ies from the field of legislative studies. Our results demonstrate that minimum edit distance methods can produce superior measures of text amendments to hand-coded efforts in a fraction of the time and resource costs.
Mobile and Residential INEA Wi-Fi Hotspot Network
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2016
Year: 2016

Since 2012 INEA has been developing and expanding the network of IEEE 802.11 compliant Wi-Fi hotspots (access points) located across the Greater Poland region. This network consists of 330 mobile (vehicular) access points carried by public buses and trams and over 20,000 fixed residential hotspots distributed throughout the homes of INEA customers to provide Internet access via the "community Wi-Fi" service. Therefore, this paper is aimed at sharing the insights gathered by INEA throughout 4 years of experience in providing hotspot-based Internet access. The emphasis is put on daily and hourly trends in order to evaluate user experience, to determine key patterns, and to investigate the influences such as public transportation trends, user location and mobility, as well as, radio frequency noise and interference.
Stress-constrained continuum topology optimization: a new approach based on elasto-plasticity
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2016
Year: 2016

A new approach for generating stress-constrained topological designs in continua is presented. The main novelty is in the use of elasto-plastic modeling and in optimizing the design such that it will exhibit a linear-elastic response. This is achieved by imposing a single global constraint on the total sum of equivalent plastic strains, providing accurate control over all local stress violations. The single constraint essentially replaces a large number of local stress constraints or an approximate aggregation of them--two common approaches in the literature. A classical rate-independent plasticity model is utilized, for which analytical adjoint sensitivity analysis is derived and verified. Several examples demonstrate the capability of the computational procedure to generate designs that challenge results from the literature, in terms of the obtained stiffness-strength-weight trade-offs. A full elasto-plastic analysis of the optimized designs shows that prior to the initial yielding, these designs can sustain significantly higher loads than minimum compliance topological layouts, with only a minor compromise on stiffness.
Using Software-Defined Networking for Ransomware Mitigation: the Case of CryptoWall
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2016
Year: 2016

Currently, different forms of ransomware are increasingly threatening Internet users. Modern ransomware encrypts important user data and it is only possible to recover it once a ransom has been paid. In this paper we show how Software-Defined Networking (SDN) can be utilized to improve ransomware mitigation. In more detail, we analyze the behavior of popular ransomware - CryptoWall - and, based on this knowledge, we propose two real-time mitigation methods. Then we designed the SDN-based system, implemented using OpenFlow, which facilitates a timely reaction to this threat, and is a crucial factor in the case of crypto ransomware. What is important is that such a design does not significantly affect overall network performance. Experimental results confirm that the proposed approach is feasible and efficient.